Tuesday, Nov. 5, the call-in discussion group will be discussing Chapter 12 (Symbolic Attacks) AND Chapter 13 (SteveO, Do I Have TMS?) in Steve Ozanich's book The Great Pain Deception starting at 9 pm Eastern Time. It lasts an hour, sometimes a little longer. Phone lines will open half an hour early so you can talk to hosts and early callers.

About Chapter 12: We can catch colds from other people. We also can develop TMS pain from our own or other peoples’ emotions. Steve calls them “symbolic attacks."

Tuesday is election day in many parts of the country. I hope you will vote because we might get some good people in office to help give us less pain. Politics and the economy can cause us a lot of TMS pain.

As our friend Steve quotes in the opening of this chapter, “The part of your body where you have stored your anger is the part that has to express it.”

Politicians and the economy go together causing a lot of pain. They’re part of “Symbolic Attacks.”

Steve gives an example of a man who hated commuting to work by driving there in his car. His unconscious mind gave him numbness in his right leg, the one that presses down on the gas petal. He knew what was causing the pain, commuting to work by car. He might have tried public transportation, but the problem may have gone deeper into him not liking his job.

A woman developed pain in an arm, and went to see a psychoanalyst who told her it was because she had fallen in love with a man who hadn’t yet proposed to her. Her family had cautioned her against marrying the man, and to forget about him. This was coupled with her doubts that he really loved her. One night, he held her close and pressed her arm. She thought he was finally going to propose, but he didn’t. She became so angry inside, not letting him know it, and her anger converted into pain in the arm he had touched. It was the last time she ever saw him, but the arm pain continued. t was a symbolic pain attack.

Mark Twain had been one of America’s great and most successful authors, until he felt burned out in the early 1890s. He needed money to pay bills, so he forced himself to write a new book. He hated writing it and developed severe pain in his right hand, so he switched to writing with his left hand. The pain got even worse there, and he finally gave up writing with either hand and dictated the manuscript into a phonographic device, the first author ever to use one. He finished the book, it was published as The American Claimant in 1892, but it was a dud. It had been a waste of his time to write a book he didn’t want to, and the result was a symbolic attack of pain.

Dr. Sarno writes in Healing Back Pain about a man who got a rash under his gold wedding ring. Some time later, when he and his wife separated, the rash went away. He was not surprised when other gold rings did not give him a rash.

Steve says that oftentimes, men who cheat on their wives get infections in the genital area because it is the organ symbolic of their inner guilt.

A man once told Steve that his mother was deeply depressed. He confided that when he was a boy, his mother had constantly told him she was going to kill herself. She even dragged him to a vacuum cleaner and then into the garage to show him how she was going to hook it up to their car’s exhaust pipe and asphyxiate herself. He worried that if she died from that, he would be left alone, abandoned, rejected, isolated. Those fears later came back to haunt him as an adult when he suffered from a rare form of lung disease.

His unconscious mind focused on his lungs to cause him pain. If he had known about TMS, he could have spent some time thinking about his repressed emotions and realized his lung disease was the result of his boyhood trauma regarding his mother’s threat to asphyxiate herself.

Steve says a psychotherapist in Denmark has made a study about body dynamics. She discovered that every muscle in the body corresponds to a psychological function.

He says it has been clinically proven that some husbands can take on the pain symptoms of their pregnant wives. They may gain weight with their wife, even feel her abdominal pain and queasiness. The expectant father may crave pickles or ice cream and engage in mood swings.

Ab0ut Chapter 13 (SteveO, Do I Have TMS?)

Steve says that because he's had regular medical checkups and his symptoms are not structural, he assumes that every symptom (pain) he has is TMS "until proven otherwise." I feel the same way.
Now that I know about TMS causing my back pain from repressed emotions, I know from where my anxiety, anger, frustration, etc. comes from and gives me (now) just a wee bit of pain. It's TMS.

He recommends having a medical checkup from a TMS-experienced doctor, to get both a physical okay and to get deeper self-awareness, if it is possible. If one can be found nearby and you can afford the cost of the visit.

SteveO says if you wonder if your symptoms really are TMS and not structurally-caused, after getting a doctor's clean bill of health, do some TMS soul-searching to discover your repressed emotions. We all have them. I like how Steve puts it, "by simply gleaning your house."

He cracks me up sometimes. That's such a fun expression. Keep it in mind when you do your
TMS discovering because it could lighten the task. Some people find journaling to be hard work and/or too emotionally stressful. Maybe thinking it's gleaning their mental-emotional house can make it easier. I take Steve's advice and try always to end a journaling half-hour or hour remembering something pleasant or funny in my life, past or present. I can end my day's journaling on a high note. Sometimes even higher if I find something in the past or present to laugh about.

Steve gives a long check-list of answers to the question, "Do I Have TMS?" I won't list them because they'll probably be talked about in Tuesday's Call-In. Each one of them is worth
thinking about. Apply the list to yourself, but it may well apply to a spouse, sibling, friend, co-worker, boss, or other person you know. Something they said or did recently may have
triggered one or more of your TMS repressed emotions causing pain.

One of the questions on Steve's list really rang true to me. It was "Do you hate your job?"

I did, 40 years ago. I was working for a large insurance corporation and felt I like was in a combination Monkey House and Nut House. I stayed three YEARS there when I knew in less than the first TWO HOURS that I was in the wrong place for me.

I stuck it out for regular salary, but during the final months of my third year before quitting, I began to have the shakes when I was in the cafeteria lunch line. I knew then that I had to make a change. I quit shortly after that. I didn't have a new job to go to, but I had decided beforehand that I would become a freelance writer.

It's a very uncertain way of making a living, but I have loved every day of it all these 40 year. I began doing something I really wanted to do and was good at. I took the financial risks and have been okay with that.

If you decide to change jobs, I do recommend you have another one to go to before quitting your job, even if you hate it. Lots of people are quitting jobs they hate or feel are wasting their abilities. Or they just want to see if they can turn a hobby or something else they like doing and turn it into a career. Sometimes lawyers quit law and become writers. Sometimes writers quit writing and become lawyers. Life can be funny, can't it!

If you hate your job and it's giving you back pain, LAUGH about it, but consider making a change. It could be the BIG ONE in the list SteveO gives of what might be causing your TMS.

Steve's list of likely causes of TMS is terrific. If you don't have his book and listen to them being read off and discussed Tuesday night, or won't be able to join the call-in, I could write them up and I don't think Steve would mind if I posted them. They would make a good new thread, if Forest agrees. What do you think, Forest? I think it could be very helpful to a lot of people.

That's it for now.

Have you experienced any “symbolic attacks” or wonder if you have TMS? I hope you will share them on the call-in Tuesday.

Symbolic attack , sounds creepy. Bet its going to be a good read.
The most important thing is I get to understand elements of my personality ya know walt
That's the part that I've worked toward for a long time and now I get to know why I do what I do

I remember I used to have symbolic attacks if I drink beer, my mom would tell me that hurt her when I drink
then years later I would drink and get sick on 1 beer ya know, I still cant drink and that was 14 years ago.
Every time I do it makes me sick and I always think of mam, id say that a symbolic attack ya know but with good intent
as most symbolism and messages are ya know.

Your telling about beer drinking causing TMS because your mother disapproved of beer drinking
is a great example of a symbolic attack. Isn't it great how much we are learning about ourselves
since learning about TMS? It ought to be taught in schools, starting in grammar school. It's much
more important than teaching about tooth decay with dancing molars. haha

Hi everyone, I just wanted to say that because the chapters are getting shorter, Herbie, Bruce and I decided that it would be best to cover both chapter 12 and 13 this week. Walt has updated his excellent post to reflect this. Thanks Walt!

I haven't had a chance to listen to the call-in sessions for a while but I definitely want to listen to this one. Chapter 13 was pivotal for me. I have known that I am a TMSer for a few years but it wasn't until I read this list and considered each item that I REALLY knew I had TMS. It was like a smack on the side of the head, a heart stopping OMG moment. I was stunned, frozen, fixated on Chapter 13 and unable to read further for a very long time. In the end I contacted dear SteveO so he could perhaps explain why I had experienced such a reaction. He responded that the book up until that point was about him (his journey, his pain, his healing). When I got to Chapter 13 it was now suddenly all about me. There was quite a bit going on at the time. I was having problems at work and was preparing to leave. My mother hadn't spoken to me in 3 years. A best friend had been seriously ill and was getting worse. My younger daughter…oh gee, don't want to even go there. Anyway reading Chapter 13 was 'the straw that broke the camel's back' and it was actually my back that felt broken. I suffered a major TMS setback.

Happily I have moved on, both in life and in the book. I continue to take my sweet time reading, contemplating and absorbing Steve's words but I am now well past Chapter 13, literally and metaphorically.

If you decide to change jobs, I do recommend you have another one to go to before quitting your job, even if you hate it. .

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Yes, Walt, this was me too. I didn't actually hate the job but I felt underrated and unappreciated. There wasn't much work for me to do in my section so I asked if I could do some work in another, an area where I had previously worked so I was more than competent. The manager I spoke with didn't even bother to get back to me despite saying that she would. I took her silence as a very audible "no". Meanwhile I had been training for another position elsewhere. I resigned from my job and two weeks into my notice period my TMS (sciatica) began to plague me until I eventually collapsed. The MRI showed the very common bulging disk at L5/S1 with nerve impingement plus degenerative disc disease, aka "grey hair of the spine." I had to wait until my pain reduced and I was off certain drugs before starting to work again so this set me back a few months. I am taking it very slowly, not grabbing all the work I can get - I am also freelance. I know that I have to look after myself before increasing my pace.

Hey folks, here's the audio from Tuesday's discussion. As always, you can do this via the audio player below, or you can download it as an mp3 by right-clicking on this link (or the link below the audio player) and choosing to save it to your computer. Next week's discussion is on Chapter 14, "What You Need to Understand to Heal" - check out Walt's thread for more info.

I do want to mention, there is a bit of background noise at the beginning during some of Bruce's summary, but the majority of it does go away after the 4 minute mark or so. For those of you who attend the discussions, I would just remind you all to mute yourselves when you're not speaking, and un-mute yourself when you do want to jump in. That's really the best way to minimize any background noise or echos that the recording picks up. I do try to clean up the audio as best I can when I edit/process the recording before posting it here, but really, there's not that much I can do on my end.

Anyhoo, the discussion was still a great one! And really, the noise isn't that bad. Like I said it does go away pretty early on. I mainly just wanted to remind you all about the muting/unmuting thing. That's all I guess! Happy listening

yb44... Freelancing is a hard way to make a living but I never liked working for big biz as I had.
I always hated having to work at the level of someone else's incompetence.

What kind of freelance work do you do? I know there are lots of ways to freelance besides writing, as I do.
A cousin in Michigan was an employee benefits specialist for the federal government but left them
some years ago to do the same for corporations.

But he's lucky... his wife works and most months she pays the mortgage and bills.
A neighbor has the same arrangement.

I've thought it must have been great to have a benefactor, as creative people used to have years ago.
I'm still available, if anyone owns a couple of apartment buildings.